


When My Time Comes

by titanjammies



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, Other, Queerplatonic Relationships, and erwin and levi are cis also, but other than that everyone's trans, but yeah for the most part no romance but a lot of qp, everyone is trans and/or nonbinary, except mike because im too lazy to think of something and so is he probably, jean talks about music a lot, lots of blood and gore, marco has a terrible dog, no romance (except ymir and historia are dating but that's not really a part of the plot), so much swearing holy shit, some people's pronouns change from chapter to chapter bc of that, zombie-ish virus but the zombies are kind of just tall humanoid shapes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-09 09:35:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titanjammies/pseuds/titanjammies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a story about killer queer kids who live (and sometimes die) in a world that's trying to eat them</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as just redoing a now year-old zombie au but it kind of got out of hand and turned into a long-term multichapter project so yeah. enjoy.

** I. **

"Eren you have to eat something."

She's pushing a granola bar in my face, like she doesn't know exactly what my answer will be. She does, though.

"I'm not hungry." My face is buried in my arms, which are crossed and resting on the peeling picnic table in front of me. I mumble the words into the sleeves of my jacket so she won't hear. She doesn't need to hear that anyway because I've been telling her the same thing for almost two weeks.

This time, though, she won't take no for an answer. My sister yanks my head up by the hair with an astonishing amount of force and I yell at her to let go.

"Eat."

Mikasa looks angry, but her eyes are so blank she almost seems dead. Numb, that's the word I'd use I think. She's numb like she can't even cry or be angry anymore. Armin is like that too and I wonder if I'm like that and that's what kills me about this whole fucking situation. There are only two people left to care about, and they look like they've given up.

"Eren, eat."

We're sitting at a Sonic in the middle of nowhere, trying to pick ourselves up and figure out what the hell to do now. Armin, who had been instantly appointed as the official navigator, is bent over a map of the state.

We escaped Shinganshina each with a backpack of everything we could think to grab while running the fuck out of there and five dollars in total between the three of us. Mom had only enough time to usher Mikasa and me out of the house, toss Mikasa the car keys, and desperately beg us to get out of town before an eight foot tall thing grabbed her. I wish I had looked back and seen what had become of her really. I wish I had told her I loved her. I wish I hadn't argued that morning about my music being too loud. I wish, I wish, I wish. Nothing can possibly do any good, and I know it. At least Armin and Mikasa are with me. That's what I've been telling myself over and over again. They're with me and I have to keep going for them because without them I have nothing.

 

**II.**

And woe is me, and woe is you, and woe is us together

"AND WOOOOOOE IS MEEEE AND WOOOOOOE IS YOUUUU AND WOOOOOOOOOOE IS US TOGEt-OW WHAT THE FUCK"

Sasha's shoe hits me hard in the back of the head.

"Shut the fuck up," she says, grabbing handful of kettle corn and shoving it into her mouth.

"I'm singing. It's a good song and I'm singing along do you have a fucking problem with that, Braus?"

"Yeah. You shound like shit." crumbs are coming off of every possible place on her, flying off of her shirt and out of her mouth, rolling off her lap and onto the already trashed floor of Connie's ancient van.

"You better not be getting food all over my car!" 

Sometimes I think the only thing Connie's ever cared about is whether or not his pile of shit car is in working condition since he yells at us about it 24/7.

Marco is waking now up from a nap, tugging on a bracelet (like the kind kids make at summer camp) with the words "he/him/his" spelled out in alphabet beads. He rubs his eyes and yawns. 

"Jean turn around," he tells me while Sasha attempts to smooth down a part of his hair that's sticking straight up.

"Geez, what are you my mom?" I turn around anyway. It's three A.M. on a Saturday in June. We're about an hour outside  Denver, a long way from home base back in Kansas City.

"So what are we doing all the way out here anyway?" I study the road atlas sitting in my lap, "We're heading toward Breckenridge, right? Isn't that a skiing town? Was there some kind of titan incident up on the mountain? We gonna fight some zombie skiers? 'Cause that'd be pretty awesome not gonna lie. Stab 'em with ski poles hel-"

"We're just going to talk to some guy who claims to have seen something up on the slopes," Marco is unnaturally alert for someone who's just been asleep for hours. "If we see any real titan action in Breck, I'd be surprised."

"God dammit."

"What you want to come face-to-face with a ten foot tall mountain titan?" Marco has a point.

I go back to examining the roadmap. "Let's just get this job done and get back to KC as soon as possible. Now how the fuck do you read this thing?"

 

**III.**

Click click click click click

They type so fast it's almost inhuman.

Click click clickclickclickclickclickclickclick"Doctor Zoe, shouldn't you be asleep?"

"Oh hi Moblit no I can't sleep yet oh is that coffee yeah thanks just leave it there whoa wait what's this"

Doctor Zoe's sentences rarely contain punctuation, and their massive coffee intake definitely has something to do with it. This week in particular has been full of possible new developments, so coffee is in high demand and sleep has been minimal. When Hanji pulls an all-nighter, so does the entire lab. I yawn for what has to be the fiftieth time in the past two hours.

"Moblit could you hand me that sweatshirt?"

I do, and when they don't make a move to take the jacket from my hands I wrap it around their shoulders.

"How is research going, Doctor?"

"Terribly" they don't even stop typing, "There are so many inconsistencies and variations in behavior and physical appearance even in the titans from the same areas. This project is eating me alive, Moblit."

I nod. "need anything?"

"Just keep the coffee on hand."

 

**IV.**

Erwin's tapping his foot on the pavement to the beat of some tune only he can hear. Smoke curls from the tip of his cigarette and I can see sweat forming on the back of his neck.

"Would it kill you to stop that fucking tapping or are you losing control of your foot?" I say, rolling my sleeves up and loosening my tie a bit. "Damn it's hot out here."

"Welcome to Missouri, Levi." Erwin doesn't stop tapping and I'm tempted to just step on his foot.

"Do you have selective hearing? I said stop it with your fucking foot."

He stops tapping and takes another drag on his cigarette.

"Why are we even out here?" I ask. It's four in the morning and we're standing outside the Kansas City Public Library, one of us smoking and both of us sweating.

"Hanji's pulling an all-nighter, so we should be on hand if they find out anything."

"No I mean why this particular spot?"

"There's a Starbucks nearby."

Oh Jesus, he's planning on staying out here all night, I realize.

"Hey, what about that report from Mike up in Breckenridge?"

Erwin pauses. 

"He said he saw a mountain titan."

"I have a hard time believing Mike said those words exactly."

"Actually I believe the words he used were 'smelled a mountain titan'"

"Weird bastard."

 

** v. **

"No, Ymir. Yeah. What, why? No. No, not Denver. Nah some skiing town or something. Yeah. Yes. YES THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING. No. Okay, bye."

Reiner practically slams his old flip phone shut, mumbling something about a "fucking queen of asshats" while angrily biting into his soda straw.

"What was that?" Annie asks, her tone blank and vaguely uninterested.

"Ymir. She and Krista are off in New York somewhere actually getting shit done while we're stuck with this shitty titan sighting case. I thought Jean was on this one? Why are we going?"

"Just stop complaining and do what we're told." Annie shoots him a look and bites into a french fry.

"I can't believe you're eating those without salt. What kind of person eats fries with no salt?"

She ignores his comment and continues lecturing him about The Plan.

"Just stick to doing what they tell you and follow our orders until the right time. Stick to The Plan or the secret gets out. Secret gets out and that's it, we're all fucked."

"Yeah yeah. Put some salt on those fries, woman. You're making me sick."

She grabs the pepper shaker out of my hand and shakes pepper all over her french fries and glaring at Reiner, who looks at her in horror.


	2. Whole Foods, Adults, And Shapes In The Woods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> REALLY IMPORTANT INFO: so, i had to edit this chapter a lot because some people (mostly me) were complaining about this chapter being too much of an info dump. Sooooo yeah don't go on to chapter three until you've read the updated version of this chapter because i'm actually gonna get into some important stuff here.
> 
> it's still jean's pov and i kept in some info about titans, but intros are just gonna happen more naturally now because it's better that way.

 

When you hear the words “zombie hunter” you probably think of some white guy in his early thirties, maybe with some stubble, strategically placed rips in his clothes, possibly with some kind of artfully arranged blood on his face to make him look tough and sexy. Maybe a gun, too. And you probably picture this guy having a deep, slightly gravelly voice, perfect for throwing around one-liners while he blasts masses of the undead to bits. Maybe he’s got a lady sidekick (also white, maybe in her late twenties) with big boobs and tiny shorts. Probably an irrelevant heterosexual subplot, apocalyptic setting, a few people who are only there to get killed, etc., etc.

That’s probably one of the reasons I’ve stopped using the word “zombie” to explain my job to people. Titans are, technically, zombie-ish creatures, but they’re a whole new brand of horrifying. A titan virus host in the final shift stage is pretty fucking high on my list of things I’d rather not deal with, right up there with hospitals and understanding human emotions.

Charred-looking skin, blank white eyes, twisted hands; a full-on titan is worse than any zombie I can think of. But I’d rather not talk about that right now.

In addition to the whole Titans Are Not Zombies thing, Scout’s “zombie hunters” are a far cry from your average video game heroes.

First of all we’re kids. Teenagers who are mostly pulled, often kicking and screaming, out of small towns in the chaos of what Scout calls a Viral Breach. A few are runaways looking for a place to go, and some just show up without giving a backstory. Nobody asks, and nobody really cares where you come from as long as you’re willing to be a part of the efforts. Follow orders and pretty soon you’re part of the family, no questions asked.

My story’s a little different. My mom started working as a scientist for Scout back when the project first started ten years ago. Three years ago they transferred her to the main lab, which meant leaving our tiny apartment in Trost for an even tinier one in Kansas City. Mom got sent back to Trost (without me) a year later, and soon after that I was sucked into being part of what we call the Apocalypse Road trip. 

Our mission is pretty simple: go where we’re told, eliminate potential threats if we have to, and do anything we can to prevent viral breaches. 

And don’t die. Whatever you do, don’t die on your team.

* * *

I don’t remember falling asleep, but I guess it happened at some point because I open my eyes and don’t recognize any of our surroundings.

The car is stopped on the edge of a big open field by the side of the empty highway. A few hundred feet away, there's a small pond that's either really really still or frozen over, and beyond that all there is for what seems like forever is a thick expanse of evergreens. Yesterday we could see the faint outlines of snowcapped mountains ahead of us, but now the mountains are practically in full view. Beside me, Connie is totally passed out, snoring in the driver's seat with his head slumped to the side. Marco and Sasha are whispering about something in the back seat, but I'm not awake enough yet to hear what they're saying. The digital clock Marco keeps on the dashboard says that it's 7:43 am. Connie must have pulled over to sleep at some point so he wouldn't crash the car. 

The last thing I remember is stopping at a Whole Foods at 5 am and grabbing whatever looked caffeinated from the overwhelmingly full refrigerated beverage shelves. (Did you know there are at least seven different brands, all claiming to have the most refreshing organic iced pomegranate white tea? I didn’t.) Marco, who had been holding in pee for half an hour, had sprinted in there so fast that it was impossible to tell that he'd gotten maybe three hours of sleep in the past two days. I could just barely tell what was going on, and I think I might have gotten lost somewhere in the "healthy lifestyle" aisles, because I remember a bored-looking employee with a brown and teal dip-dyed braid and a "GO VEGAN" button pinned to their apron kept asking me why I was giving the All Natural Tangerine Patchouli Soap the death glare. I'm pretty sure my reply was something like "what the hell's a patchouli," and then they rolled their eyes and walked away muttering something about "useless stoners." That was about the time that I realized I needed coffee or I'd be out cold really soon, and I somehow found my way to the drink section, which sounds easy but I assure you is way harder than you'd think if you're only half awake in an unfamiliar store with an unnecessarily convoluted layout.

Evidently, the “Organic All-Natural Black Tea With Lemon” I ended up buying wasn’t caffeinated because I crashed not five minutes after plopping my ass into the passenger seat. I also know that because, upon further inspection, there’s a big, green DECAF printed in block letters on the bottle. 

“‘Morning sunshine,” Sasha deadpans while smashing her boots repeatedly into the back of my seat. I can hear Marco fumbling around in my backpack, muttering “No” every so often, because his dog, Hamlet, keeps going for my pretzels.

"I’m up, stop kicking me," I rub sleep out of my eyes and sit farther up in the seat. Marco’s hand appears in my peripheral vision, holding a blue plastic bottle of ADHD pills. 

"Need some water?" he asks through his teeth, pulling the strings on his bracelet tighter. I take a pill out and toss the bottle back to Sasha, who puts it back in my bag.

"Nah, I still have this….. tea thing," I say, even though I don’t even remember whether or not the tea thing tastes good, and honestly I’d rather not risk it.

I take a sip anyway, reasoning that it's only to get this pill to go down, which would have been helpful except that a) the tea is absolutely vile, and b) I take an enormous swig of the stuff.

 I choke down the pill, open the car door, and spit the rest of the tea in my mouth onto the grass. Maybe I should have asked Go Vegan which teas tasted like shit before buying anything. This thing is like a liquefied contradiction of itself; It's too sweet and too bitter, and my mouth now feels simultaneously slimy and like all the moisture's been sucked out of it. 

 "Jean, what's wrong?" Marco asks, "are you okay?"

 I'm on my knees, doubled over and spitting all over the ground. 

 "No," I groan, dramatically clutching my chest and laying in the dirt "I think I've been poisoned. Bye you guys. It was nice knowing you. Tell my mom I lo-  _oh fuck it's cold out here what the fuck."_  

 And it really is cold, at least for June. It can't be more than forty degrees, and it might have been this cold last night when we were running in and out of Whole Foods, but I had just chalked it up to it being dark out then. Now it's morning, the sun is behind the clouds, and I'm freezing in my lightweight t-shirt and no shoes. Sasha opens her door and throws a leather jacket and a green sweatshirt at me. She marches over to stand in front of me.

 "Yeah, welcome to Colorado, Jean," every time she speaks, a bit of powdered sugar falls onto the toes of her clunky brown boots, "what did you expect, tropical beaches? CONNIE WAKE UP FOR GOD'S SAKE."

 Connie jerks awake and stretches his arms in a comically exaggerated yawn. Sasha reaches up to hand him a white paper pastry bag and a few napkins. Connie looks back at her quizzically."

 "Breakfast," she explains before shoving whatever was shedding powdered sugar all over her back into her mouth and continuing to speak around the unidentified pastry, "Sorry there weren't any more of these things. I got you three ciabatta rolls instead." I have no idea what a chabatatata is, and I wonder if it's anything like a patchouli. As it turns out, the rolls aren't anything extraordinary. They look and taste like miniature loaves of fancy bread, actually. Connie passes around the bag of rolls and we eat on top of the car, each of us now wearing proper clothing for the cold weather.

 "So what horrible beverages did everyone else get at Organic Hell?" I ask, swallowing a big wad of bread.

 "Man, I don't even remember Organic Hell except for the bathroom," Marco drops a lump of his roll down to Hamlet.

 "Is it really a good idea to be feeding your dog bread?" Sasha is finishing off the last of her mystery pastry, licking sugar off of her finger.

 "I don't know. He likes it, so I assume it's not killing him. What are you eating, anyway?"

 "Ummm..." Sasha studies her hand, looking for any remaining sugar, "I think it was some kind of donut? I wasn't really paying attention to what it was, I just saw powdered sugar and was like 'shit let's just go with that.' It was good, whatever it was."

 There's a long pause, but a comfortable one. We're pretty used to meals like this by now. It's been almost two years since the four of us started traveling together, and 5 am stops for food and bathroom breaks have become the norm. I don't know how the car hasn't collapsed under our weight yet, because we sit up here so much. It's really a miracle the van still functions considering it's ancient and had been sitting out back at Scout's headquarters for years before Connie laid claim to it. He calls the car Rose, and will fight you tooth and nail if you try to tell him his car's a wreck. In Rose's defense, she's as much a part of the family as anything else really. She herself is a home, much more so than the hotel we crash at when we're back in Kansas City. We've been through some shit in this crap heap excuse for a car, and although I'd never admit it to Connie, I'm pretty attached to Rose.

 Marco breaks the silence.

 "We're terrible adults," he says, flicking a piece of bread crust away from him.

 "We're not adults. We're seventeen." Connie corrects him.

 "I think we qualify as adults. We've seen enough crap to be adults."

 "Fair enough."

 "But I mean, we're really awful at it, you know?" 

 "What does that even mean?" Sasha joins into the conversation.

 "We're like, old enough to handle ourselves and not die as soon as we're given responsibility. But also, we're really bad at that. As soon as we're on the road we force ourselves to run on next to no sleep and we buy crappy food and that's all we eat. I'm probably letting my dog get fat by feeding him bread, but I continue to feed him bread anyway. I mean, we can keep ourselves alive on our own, but we probably shouldn't be allowed to."

 "I don't think we're adults," Connie says, and then adds, "and I don't want to be an adult. Adults always seemed kind of.....  _stuck,_ _"_

 "What's that supposed to mean?" I don't know where this conversation came from or where it's going.

 "I think I get it," Marco sounds like a kid who's finally starting to understand long division, "You mean how adults don't seem to change ever. They have their jobs and their lives and they know what's real and what's not, so they don't ever imagine doing anything besides what they're already doing. Right?"

 "Yeah," Connie looks like he's still thinking over Marco's explanation, "Yeah that's it. I'd rather be able to see a better future and be wrong than have a one right in front of me and never see it.... I guess."

 "That's deep, bruh," Sasha completely ruins the mood, putting on her "white boy voice," which is basically just her normal voice but lower, slumping her back, and punching Connie in the arm.

 "Ow, what the fuck?" Connie whines, rubbing his arm.

 "Oh, sorry man. I didn't mean to hit you that hard."

 I'm distracted by movement in the corner of my eye. Over by the pond, half-shrouded in the morning fog, two deer are striding cautiously across the field. One is small and clearly younger than the other, but not exactly a baby. The bigger one is probably its mother. Unfortunately, I'm not the only one who sees the deer. Hamlet barks and sprints off in the direction of the deer, startling them into bolting into the woods.

 "Marco, your dog's escaping," I warn him, reaching over and pulling on his sleeve to get his attention.

 "Oh dammit, HAMLET, COME HERE," Marco slides off the car and nearly falls on his face, but he recovers and runs after Hamlet.

 "Should we help him?" Sasha wonders aloud. The three of us look around, sending "Well I'm not going to be the one to do it" vibes to each other.

 "Oh Christ.  _I'll_ do it." I scramble down and sprint after Marco.

 I'm a lot faster than him, and I catch up to him pretty easily, but we've both lost sight of Hamlet. Now we're really just running forward without any real purpose. We're panting and slowing down, and then Marco trips and hits the ground. I skid to a stop and turn around, but he's fine. He stand up and tells me so, brushing a few blades of dry grass out of his hair before yelling again for his dog.

 "HAMLET!" he yells, out of breath but even louder than before. We're both calling to this damn dog now, and I think we must look pretty fucking ridiculous, standing out here in the middle of nowhere with grass in our hair and dark circles under our eyes, sounding like we're yelling our voices raw for a runaway Shakespeare character. 

 "I-" I try to speak through panting breaths, "I fucking hate your dog, man." I can't tell what the look Marco gives me means, but I don't think it's understanding. He walks a little farther towards the woods, yelling for Hamlet again. 

 "We're gonna.............. we're gonna have..... to go........ into the forest......... sorry."

 "Are you fucking kidding me."

 "If it's..... any consolation........ I kind of hate my dog right now, too."

 "Oh gee thanks that's really making me feel better about having to go into the creepy unfamiliar forest to look for him."

 "Come on, Jean."

 "No way, dude. Not happening."

 Surprisingly, Marco just shrugs and continues walking in the direction of the forest on his own.

 "Whoa, whoa, what the fuck are you doing?!" I run to catch up with him and grab his shoulder, "You're not seriously going alone. I though there were titan reports around here, and you don't have any weapons."

 "The reports were in Breckenridge, Jean."

 "It's still a bad idea!"

 "Then come with me, if you think it's so dangerous to go alone."

 I can't believe what a pushover I'm being. I don't wanna have anything to do with dark forests, especially not here where there are probably wolves and bears and other things that could kill us. I'm not scared. I'm just... concerned about my friend's safety. And, by extension, my own I guess. Not scared. Marco's giving me that look like "you say you're not scared of the forest but you definitely are" and I really want to punch him right now. Whatever, I can't really change his mind, so I might as well go with him. Fuck.

* * *

"Jean, what are you doing?"

 I've been leaving a trail of crumbs from the remains of my roll so we can find our way back, but of course it's not working. Hansel and Gretel never had to deal with an asshole bird eating their breadcrumbs, and they must have had some killer eyesight because, as I'm finding out now, breadcrumbs are fucking tiny.

 "I'm leaving a trail."

 "It looks more like you're feeding a bird."

 "Yeah, I didn't really think the bird would be here."

 We've been wandering around the woods for what feels like ages (Marco insists it's only been ten minutes, but whatever) and still no sign of Hamlet, aside from a few distant barks every time we call for him.

 "You know, if dogs have such great hearing, you'd think he'd at least know which direction to go to find us," I grumble, "you're dog's an asshole."

 "HAMLET!"

 Nothing, just more barking even farther away.

 "See, I  _know_ he can hear us, but does he come find us? No."

 "Hey, be quiet for a second."

 "Why?"

 "Just be quiet."

 I am, and Marco calls for Hamlet again. Of course, nothing else happens except for a few barks.

 "I don't see how th-"

 "Does it sound to you like the barking is coming from the direction of the car?"

 He tests it again, and yeah, he's actually right. I could be excited that we found Hamlet, but it was so fucking easy I really just want to scream.

 "Jesus Christ. Hey wait, Marco!" Marco is running at full speed through the woods, back in the direction we came from.  

 "MARCO WAIT A SECOND! DO YOU EVEN KNOW THE WAY BACK?" I rush after him, but it's hard to keep track of where I'm going when this forest has no path or anything to follow, and these trees are the kind that scratch your arms and face if you run into them. I'm crashing into branches, struggling to stay upright, out of breath, freezing but sweating like a pig. Eventually my legs can't handle the lumpy terrain and I fall flat on my face. I can't hear Marco's footsteps clearly anymore, he's so far ahead of me. Usually I'm faster, but I guess I'm not good over long distances because he's so far away now. I lift my face off of the ground, and of fucking course my nose is bleeding because this just had to get worse than it already is.

 I don't even know where I am right now. it's all just trees, and I'm not really the kind of person who bothers to tell one tree from another. I stand up and press a hand to my nose, blood soaking into the green sweatshirt sleeve, turning it a muddy brownish color. If I wasn't so frantic and dizzy, I think this forest would be pretty nice. The trees are tall and thin, growing fairly close together but not so much that it's hard to move. The whole thing is set on an incline, so I can look in the direction of the highway and the car and be looking down slightly, or looking the opposite direction and see all this forest above me. I wonder vaguely if there are wolves or bears here. I wonder if wolves would attack a lost teenager without being provoked. I think a bear probably would. Are there mooses in forests? What would a moose do to me? I don't want to die by the hands or hooves or whatever of a moose. God dammit, Marco, why didn't you notice me falling over? Where the hell is Marco anyway? Is he back at the car? Did a moose kill him? My sleeve is slowly becoming saturated with blood, and I'm starting to get that awful blood-dripping-down-your-throat feeling. I can't keep standing here and let myself be killed by a wild moose, I tell myself. Just run, Jean. The sooner you get back, the better. Fear is filling me up again, twisting a mangled hand around my gut and making my heart pump faster. It's just a forest, I tell myself. This is nothing. You're fine. Just run out of here. Just run back. 

 So I sprint. My feet hit the ground so fast it almost feels mechanical, and I fly through the trees. And that's when I look up the incline.

 I don't know whether it's fear or shadows or reality, but I swear I see pitch-black, humanoid shapes crashing though the woods just up the hill. I don't know how many there are, maybe two or three, but with all the trees it's hard to tell. They're fast, charred-looking, and scare me absolutely shitless because if they're real, I know exactly what they are.

 No no oononono how can this happen they aren't supposed to be here they're supposed to be in Breckenridge. My mind is reeling. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die I'm going to die I'm gonna die I'm gonna die I don't want to die I can't die I'm still a kid I don't want to die. I don't think I've ever run so fast in my entire life, and I don't dare to look up the hill anymore. They could be fake, I tell myself, I could be imagining them. It's just a trick of the light, the trees, your own freaked out mind playing tricks on you. Don't look up the hill don't look up the hill don't look don't look you'll be okay you'll survive it's not real you're gonna be okay just don't look up the hill.

 Somehow I choose the right place to get out of the trees, because there's the pond and beyond that there's Rose and oh man, I'm glad to see that pile of shit. I can see Connie and Sasha waving their arms around at me, and there's Marco and I can just hear him shouting "I THOUGH YOU WERE STILL BEHIND ME I'M SO SORRY," and there's Hamlet and I swear if he didn't make Marco so damn happy I'd kill that dog right now.

 My legs are shaking and I will them not to give out on me now, because I'm almost to the car. Past the pond, through the grass, into the car into the car get into the car you're safe you're okay it's okay it was nothing.

 I throw myself into the back seat, stealing Marco's spot, but he doesn't care. He takes mine. I look up to the trees, and either the titans stopped following me or they were never real to begin with, because they're, thank god, nowhere to be seen.

 "Get in the car," I say, out of breath, but I think it comes out too loud because Marco jumps a foot into the air, Connie puts up his hand defensively, and Sasha asks what the fuck happened to me. We hurry up anyway, and I curl into a ball in my seat, gasping for breath and shaking.

 "You wanna tell us what that was all about, Jean?" Connie barks at me once we're all in the car and headed down the highway again.

 I don't want to freak them out, because I don't even know if that was real, but if I don't say something they're only gonna grill me until I talk.

 I take a deep breath.

 "I think I saw titans in the woods."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about any confusion. I'll try to not do this ever again and get chapters right the first time in the future.
> 
> my tumblr is rairatrio. If you have any comments, questions, etc (fanart maybe???????) just shoot me a message or you can tat post as #wmtc fic. Next chapter will have more action, I promise.


	3. Titans Where They Shouldn't Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean bleeds on everything, Levi calls, and Mike hides in Starbucks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> VERY IMPORTANT NOTICE:  
> in case you didn't know this already, chapter two was completely rewritten and if you haven't read the rewrite yet, please do so before reading this one otherwise you'll miss a lot and be really confused
> 
> Marco's POV this time around.

As soon as the words leave Jean’s mouth, a sort of confused, rattled quiet settles over the van and Connie brings the van to a shaky halt, pulling over again and swiveling around to face Jean, looking like he’s about ready to fire a million questions at him and crash through the thin silence. Sasha’s eyes are squinted and her eyebrows gradually inch closer together. She’s turned herself around in her seat so that her legs are hanging over the sides and she’s leaning over the armrest, clenching the fake leather so tight i think her fingernails must be leaving indentations. Hamlet is the only one not shaken but the bomb Jean just dropped on us, sniffing around in the cup holder and repositioning himself on the pile of grimy, pilly blankets I keep in the back seat for him to sleep on.

 _I thought the titans were in Breckenridge_ , My mind is racing, trying to process what we’re hearing, _This isn’t even on the map of high-risk areas, right? There haven’t been any breaches anywhere near here last I checked. I mean, Breckenridge isn’t on that map either, but we don’t even know if anything’s actually there yet._ I try to go through the list Hanji Zoe, Project Scout’s head scientist, gave us last week of areas with the highest likelihood of a breach, making sure I’m not misremembering. Ze even gave us a map of the whole United States, color-coding areas the way some maps show elevation or population density, showing which areas were at risk and which weren’t. Ze had gathered the road trip teams into the main lab and explained the whole map, which ze must have sacrificed at least two packs of multicolored highlighters for, to us. Pink zones were high-risk zones, and then orange zones, then yellow, green, and blue zones in that order, followed by really low-risk purple zones and the blank zones which had no data yet. As far as I can remember, Colorado was split pretty evenly between blue and purple, with a tiny splotch of green near the Kansas Border.

So what had Jean seen? Was it possible that Hanji had miscalculated? Maybe this was some kind of anomaly. Maybe some group of outdoorsy people on a summer camping trip had somehow gotten exposed to the virus and started the shift stages while on vacation, realizing too late what was happening to them. It’s not a very solid explanation, but this isn’t a very logical situation to begin with.

Of course, it’s highly possible Jean was disoriented and only thought he saw titans. That forest was full of trees, and from what I had seen, Jean was running so fast that he couldn’t have been able to tell 100% what was going on in the distance. Maybe he’d briefly seen some shadows or trees and thought he was being chased. Maybe that deer had been chasing him and he saw her running, which is probably the worst theory I have so far considering titans don’t look like deer at all, and I’ve never heard of a deer chasing anyone before.

Jean is the one to finally break the wall of silence and interrupt my racing thoughts, which he does by making a horrible, almost inhuman kind of choking noise and hacking up a startling amount of blood into his hands. He groans and pulls his hands away from his mouth, glaring down at them and then accusingly up at us. The initial shock of how much blood has accumulated on his face and hands is enough for me to forget that his nose had been bleeding when we saw him run out of the woods and into the car, and apparently Connie and Sasha have forgotten too, because we all jolt forward and gasp. Sasha clamps her hand down on Jean’s shoulder, trying to steady him in case he falls over, staring in horror at his bloody hands.

“Did it occur to any of you that I might need a tissue or something?” He balls up his fist and mops up his face with an already soaked sweatshirt sleeve, “or did you somehow miss the nosebleed while you were all staring at me?” He grimaces at his sleeve.

“You okay?” I ask.

“Yeah, just gimme some space. And a tissue or something,” He motions his hands around as if to emphasize that there is, in fact, quite a lot of blood on him.

“What happened?”

“I fell. Must’ve hit my face on something. Don’t think it’s broken, just gushing blood a little,” He frowns at me “Thanks for running off on me, man. Really appreciated that.”

Now that I know he isn’t bleeding internally or anything like that I’m slightly more relaxed, but I really do horrible about leaving him alone in the woods to fend for himself and bust up his nose. He looks genuinely angry about it, his stare boring holes into me even after I’ve apologized. Sasha sighs and releases her death grip on his shoulder. I look around on the floor for a pack of tissues and find a discarded pastry bag, which thankfully still has a napkin crumpled inside of it. Jean takes the napkin and manages to at least get most of the blood off of himself before ripping off a bit and stuffing it into his nose to catch the blood that might still be coming out, which would be funny if we weren’t all waiting to hear about the slightly more pressing matter of seeing our main enemy in a place they’re not supposed to be in.

“So, you planning on telling us about what happened back there?” Connie launches into the questions I can tell he’s been dying to ask since we first got into the car.

“Let’s get on the road first,” I say, because everyone seems to have forgotten that we’re actually on a job and we’ve been putting it off, “Wouldn’t want to delay our mission any more than we already have.” Connie looks hesitant about this suggestion.

“I can drive if you want,” I offer.

* * *

 

“So there I was, right?” Jean’s voice behind me is low and anxious and a little bit excited, like someone telling you about that time they swear they saw a ghost in their attic. “Marco was like ‘hey is that barking coming from the direction of the car’ and I was like ‘yeah it kinda does’ and he just takes off running and I try to tell him to slow down, because I’m out of breath still, but I guess he couldn’t hear me or something. And the trees around here are pretty thick because there’s not a trail or anything and it’s not really a place to hike, you know?”

We’re up in the mountains now, the road growing windy and narrow. There’s pine trees and cliffs on every side of us, and I half expect to see a mountain goat or bighorn sheep standing up on one of the ledges every time I shift my gaze to the side. The sky is overcast and heavy, like a vast gray blanket draped across the dull, rocky landscape of dusty greens and muddy browns. Jean’s phone is hooked up to Sasha’s crappy blue wireless speakers, playing some obscure lo-fi indie band I’m pretty sure maybe five people on earth have ever heard of. From what i can make out from the lyrics it’s a song about wanting to be haunted or something. The audio quality is distorted and terrible, but I think that’s an aesthetic thing rather than a shitty recording. Connie’s always telling Jean that he doesn’t understand his music taste, but this is nice. Jean's nose has gone from gushing to a slow stream until finally coming to a complete end to the blood fest on his face and hands. Hamlet has taken an almost morbid liking to licking the blood off of Jean.

“So anyway,I lose sight of you, dude,” he motions to me with a fist full of bloody napkins, “And  I’m kinda getting freaked out at this point because I don’t really know where I am and I’m alone and I just take off running again and fall flat on my face and when I get up this shit,” he waves his handful of napkins around for emphasis, “happens. And i just start running again because I’m really freakin’ out now and I look up the hill and-” he stops there.

“And what?” Sasha nudges his leg with her foot.

“I don’t… It might not even be real, okay. I don’t know. I might have just been seeing things or something. But I look up the hill and I see titans. Three of them maybe. I couldn’t really pick out what they looked like exactly or anything about them but I thought… I thought they were there.”

There’s a long pause, and I can hear Hamlet licking blood off of Jean’s hand and the wind outside and Jean tapping his foot on the floor of the car, waiting to hear what we think.

“I thought this was a low-risk area,” Sasha points out, “So what’s with all the reports? First Mike’s seeing, oh wait I mean smelling, titans and now Jean says he saw three in some random forest by the side of the road? Seems kinda fishy, don’t you think?”

“I thought so too,” I say, “But nothing’s impossible. According to Hanji, the shift stages happen pretty fast in a lot of the varieties around this area. Maybe some campers started to turn while out in the woods and never got home because they were titans before they knew what was happening.” Connie frowns.

“That theory seems a little off to me. I mean, I don’t really know. You know more about this than I do, Marco, but it doesn’t sound quite right.”

Jean sighs loudly like he’s deflating and kicks the back of my seat in the process of pulling his knees into his chest.

“Maybe it was really nothing, then.” He thinks for a second and then adds, “but the more I think about it, the more I’m thinking it wasn’t.”

“Maybe call Hanji, then,” Sasha suggests, “Ze might know something we don’t. But let’s not worry about it now when it’s not part of our job.” Connie nods in agreement. I can tell both of them are eager to leave the woods behind us and ignore the potential threat as long as possible. Truth be told, I would be more than happy to do that and I think I can safely say that Jean would agree.

    "We gonna tell the Scout people about this?" the question has been running laps in my mind for a while now, but it's Jean who finally says it out loud. Should we tell the Scout people? It's definitely important information that we shouldn't withhold, I think.

     "Yes."

     "If we tell them, you know Erwin's gonna dump our asses back into the fray and send us on a tracking mission. Might as well just not go home, if that's how it's gonna be," Connie grumbles, eyes scanning the Colorado road map but not actually looking at it.

     "We'll figure it out," I try to shut down the conversation before it turns into an argument, "Do I turn here?"

For a while, we just drive. We don’t talk about the woods or the titans there or the ones we may or may not meet soon. We’re all thinking about it, but nobody says anything. That’s probably for the best. We talk about Jean’s music taste and how Hamlet needs a bath and whether or not Boromir was a good guy. At some point the distorted monotone of whatever we had been listening to becomes background noise rather than music, and even Jean stops paying attention to it. We fall in and out of calm quiet.

It’s almost noon when Jean’s cell phone goes off, grating, high-pitched beeping breaking a silence that had been sitting around undisturbed for a while. He straightens himself out in his seat and makes a grab for the phone sitting on the dashboard, yanking the cord connecting it to the speakers and nearly dropping it three times.

“Yeah?” Jean almost never answers the phone with “hello” for whatever reason. There’s a muffled sound from the other end. “Oh.”

Jean’s face arranges itself into a grimace. Whoever’s on the other end, they don’t get along. (Not that there’s a lot of people who get along with Jean in the first place, honestly.)

“Yeah, what do you want?” More muffled noises, “Yeah here.” He puts the phone on speaker, turning the volume all the way up and lets it fall from his hand to the floor unceremoniously, looking at it like it's just personally offended him. Considering who we're dealing with here, that's understandable.

There's some mumbled, staticky swearing before a familiar bored-sounding voice says, "Christ, Kirschstein, just blast my eardrums out why don't you?" Jean doesn't apologize.

"What's up now?" Jean says, clearly trying to keep his voice even.

"We got a weird voicemail from Mike at around 4 A.M. this morning. Might change your situation," Captain Levi drones. The contact picture Jean set (a stealthy snapshot taken during a meeting a few weeks ago that had nearly landed him and Reiner Braun on microwave cleaning duty for a month) glows up from the screen, open-mouthed and comically unflattering. If you'd never seen Levi and only ever heard his voice, you would probably picture his as being some tall, muscley action-movie type of guy. This is not the case, and even though I've mostly gotten used to hearing a buff guy voice come out of his tiny 5'3 body and perpetually pissed and oddly froglike face, it still catches me off guard.

"Why didn't you call us about it earlier?" Jean asks

"Didn't check the phone until now. Hanji and the scientists finally took a break last night, so everyone was asleep when we got the call. Anyway, here it is." There's some clicking noises and the voicemail starts playing. Mike sounds only mildly panicked, which is strange because what he's saying makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

"Hey, Erwin it's me," his voice says, "I'm under a table in Starbucks right now. Right outside there's three fully shifted titans looking in the window. I can see a couple more behind them," there's a shuffling noise and a young guy's muffled voice says something like "holy shit" over and over again before Mike turns the phone away from his face and and tells the guy, probably some poor Starbucks employee, to calm down and not make any sudden movements.

"They're everywhere, Mike says into the phone again, "I don't know what's going on but it sure as hell isn't normal. Th-" the machine cuts him off.

"What the fuck," Connie mutters under his breath.

"We haven't heard anything from him since then, so who knows what shape he's in or if he's even alive," Levi doesn't sound terribly concerned, "I already called Braun and his team. I've got them checking out the surrounding areas instead of meeting up with you in town, so you four are on your own on this one. Keep us posted on what the deal is and keep your eyes open. Anything weird you report to Scout, got it?"

"Wait a second," Sasha interrupts, "Titans that aren't supposed to be here start popping up everywhere fully shifted and you're treating this like some small thing. This seems like something you send in full teams of scientists for, not the road trip teams. Ever since we got into Colorado-"

"You're saying there's something else going on?"

Sasha stops, realizing Levi doesn't know about Jean's little maybe-run-in with the titans in the woods. "Yeah, actually. Jean saw something in the woods this morning."

"Why were you in the woods?" Levi asks.

"Marco's dog ran off. But yeah we went to find him and then Marco left me alone and I thought- I mean I'm not sure exactly- but yeah I thought I saw some titans," Jean explains. Levi sighs loudly, like talking to us is exhausting. Connie and Jean roll their eyes in unison. Can you believe this guy?

“Just go to Breckenridge,” Levi finally says, “See if Mike’s still alive, check out the area. Do the job you’re here for and then get your asses back here in one piece.”

“Will do,” Jean says, hanging up and mumbling, “jackass,” once he’s sure Levi can’t hear him anymore.

If you can’t tell by now, Captain Levi isn’t exactly topping anyone’s list of favorite people. He’s second in command at Scout, and he’s brutal. Lord knows why he’s constantly being put in charge of a bunch of teenagers, because, to tell you the truth, he’s probably the worst person for the job. Jean’s got an especially strong hatred of him for whatever reason.

* * *

 

About twenty minutes later, we’re driving into Breckenridge. The town, or at least what looks like the main part of town, is like something from the set of a cheesy Christmas movie. The shops and restaurants are all small gingerbready little houses with peaked roofs and cookie-cutter details. There’s a few tourist agencies and about a million different shops catering to skiers and snowboarders, with fading full-color posters of athletic Scandinavian women in parkas riding down mountains in every window. Once I get past the initial Santa village shock, though, I can feel something unsettling and wrong hanging around.

It’s the quiet. I notice it as soon as we park the car and get out. There’s no titans in sight, which is a relief, but there’s also no people.

The town is deserted.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the longest thing i've ever written....
> 
> the song that was playing is haunt me (x3) by teen suicide
> 
> my tumblr is rairatrio and i track the tag #wmtc fic so if you have anything to say about this fic, fanart, comments, questions, etc., shoot me an ask or put it in the tag
> 
> Thanks for reading


	4. Warning Sign

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean and his team get to Breckenridge, only to find they're not as alone as they thought they were, and not in the way you might think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY got around to writing the next chapter. Finals were kicking my ass for a while, but i'm out of school for the summer so hopefully I'll get time to update more frequently.
> 
> You might notice a couple changes to the fic, the title being the biggest thing. I wasn't really feeling the old title because it was a reference to a plot thing that I ended up getting rid of. The new title is a reference to the song When My Time Comes by Dawes, which you should all listen to because it's really good.  
> I've completely rewritten the summary because the old one was wordy and awful, and I've added some tags and taken some out. Also Hanji's pronouns changed from them/they to ze/hir and I haven't gotten around to changing that in the prologue yet but just know that they're different now.
> 
>  
> 
> Jean's POV this time around. enjoy!

If the titan sighting and cryptic voicemail didn't give this whole job enough of a horror movie feel, the eerie gingerbread ghost town certainly does the trick. Upon first glance, the town is devoid of any life besides us and the plants, and they're not so good at explaining what exactly is going on here.

Marco parks in a lot on what seems like the edge of the main part of town, and we all haul ourselves out of the van, shivering in the unfamiliar chill. Aside from our own footsteps and a few deafening barks from Hamlet, there's a creepy void where the noise of a cute little tourist destination would normally be. There should be voices, footsteps, cars, something, but for the most part it's just dead quiet.

"Geez," Connie says, wrestling with the wadded up sweatshirt crammed into his old camouflage backpack, "It's like all the people just disappeared overnight. Isn't this supposed to be some kind of rich people vacation spot? I mean, I know it's summer and all, but there's gotta be at least a few people here." I can't help but think he's right, that the people did disappear overnight. It doesn't make any logical sense, but it would explain the lack of human activity. Marco, who's squatting down and scratching Hamlet on the ears, pauses and screws up his face like he's trying to decide something.

"I think," He says while standing up and stretching, "we might need to take some weapons. I've got a feeling this place isn't as empty as it seems."

* * *

Let me explain something about Scout's weapon and tech development division. They're good at what they do. They've come up with some great stuff, stuff that we'd all be way farther behind and possibly dead without. A couple years ago they came up with what they call Shock/Sleep Guns (S/S guns for short) to immobilize a titan for up to a few hours at a time. Regular bullets are pretty much useless on titans unless you've got some wicked good aim and can hit the weak spot in their necks dead-on, but if you can stop a titan in its tracks it's pretty easy to go in with anything you've got on you and get the job done that way. There are only so many people with good enough aim to immobilize a titan with a gun or arrows, let alone take one out, and shorter weapons get you a little too close to a titan’s mouth to be considered safe. That’s where S/S guns come in. I’m not entirely sure how they work, but the general idea is that the shooter has two options depending on what’s in the gun. The shock part comes from tiny metallic-looking balls that give out something like an electric charge on contact. I have no idea what the charge really is or how it works, but it’s just strong enough to knock a titan out for around an hour, but the shock doesn’t always work the way it should. The sleep option comes from another kind of metal ball thing, but it’s a little more self explanatory. It releases a sedative into whatever it hits, and although the effects don’t last quite as long as the shock option, the sedative has a better chance of actually having an effect.

They've also developed communication systems that are a million times more reliable than cell phones in battle situations. You wear it in your ear and turn a tiny dial to switch who you're talking to, or press a little red button to talk to everyone at once. For viral breaches, they invented harnesses with grappling hook-type wires to maneuver around rooftops so you're basically the titan-killing equivalent of Spiderman. I've never gotten to use one outside of a training session where we didn't actually get to shoot the wires, but they're fucking amazing.

But through all of this, not a single one of these people thought "Hm. Maybe we should make a weapon that kills like, actual titans." Sure they've got stuff to help out with the killing, but in the end we're still using crowbars and baseball bats to end these fuckers. It's not at all efficient and if you're walking around places with a crowbar sticking out of your backpack you're gonna look a little freaky and mothers will probably pull their children closer to them when you walk by.

So here we are walking the streets of a little ski town, four scruffy looking teenagers with badly concealed makeshift weapons in our backpacks, carrying what look like handguns, and followed by a huge dog with no leash. We either look like a pathetic excuse for an army or hardcore zombie hunters, I can't tell which. Possibly both. And as Marco predicted, we're not as alone as we thought, although the reality is a lot less frightening than what we thought it would be. Our first sign of human activity is a round, bearded man wearing a startlingly orange track suit and a horrible green plaid scarf walking an old wolfhound and humming to himself. Sasha is the first to see him, her eyes widening and immediately twisting her arm around to unzip her bag and hastily shove the s/s gun inside.

"Wh-" Connie starts to question her.

"There's a guy over there," she half-whispers through gritted teeth, jerking her head in Track Suit's direction at every other word. Connie lets out a puff of air through his lips like a horse snorting and hides his stun gun as well. Marco puts his away and starts walking towards Jump Suit. More specifically, he's walking towards Jump Suit's dog, asking in his very polite Marco way if he can pet it. This is how Marco gets information out if people, petting their dog and then asking the questions. If there's a dog involved, Marco's your guy.

I'm not so eager to give up my gun yet, but Sasha's giving me this look like she's telling me "put the gun away before the anthropomorphic orange sees it and lets his hound loose on us," so I reluctantly hide it in my backpack. My hand lingers on the crowbar, but it's probably better to keep dangerous objects out of the equation for now.

"What kind of dog is she?" Marco is asking the man, trying to avoid the big tongue reaching for his nose.

"Irish wolfhound," Track Suit says. He has a thick accent that's something between Swedish and choking noises, and the largest and most strawberry-like nose I've ever seen on a human being. He asks Marco something that sounds vaguely like "is that a metal pipe sticking out of your bag?" which Marco either ignores or couldn't understand because he doesn't say anything in response. It could also be because the dog is trying to get intimate with his face at the moment. When he finally manages to avoid getting his tongue licked, he starts asking questions.

"Does it seem a little deserted to you around here?"

Track Suit thinks for a second and then nods.

"Why is that? I've been confused all day. My friends and I are on a road trip and we heard this was a pretty busy town."

Track Suit's reply is something along the lines of "No idea. I've been wondering the same thing." Marco nods and "hmm"s before giving Track Suit's dog another ruffle on the top of her head and standing up.

Marco’s tapping the side of his leg with his finger over and over again, I notice. He has this habit of fidgeting when something’s bugging him, tapping things or clenching and unclenching his fists or picking at and pulling on his bracelet strings. When he starts doing it while we’re on a job, I’ve learned to pay attention because it’s like a red flag that something is wrong. I don’t know when I picked up on this; Maybe I noticed him doing it once and then started paying more attention to his hands, or maybe I just figured it out over time without realizing it. It’s like I don’t even have to think about noticing now, because I’m so used to using Marco as a kind of alert system. Drumming on his thigh? Better be on my guard. I guess it’s just what happens when you’ve spent most of the last two years living in close quarters with the same four people. You notice things pretty quickly. And as far as I know, Marco’s never been this fidgety without something unexpected happening. I make a mental note to be on my guard, moving my hand over the pocket of my jacket where I keep a tiny pocket knife. Marco’s eyes shift from the dog to me, then down at his own hand. He stops tapping and his face softens from suspicious to friendly in three seconds flat

"Thank you for letting me pet your dog, sir," he says to Track Suit, smiling, "Do you by any chance know a good place to get some lunch?"

* * *

The place Track Suit told us about turns out to be nothing but a little cart that sells crepes, and from the ten people standing in line, it looks like what's left of the town is gathering there. Not that I can really blame them, though, because the air around the cart smells like butter and dough and sugar and my stomach is quick to remind me that I haven't eaten anything since early this morning. **  
**

There's a blue sign next to the sidewalk displaying the words CREPES A LA CART in large yellow letters. There's a wooden deck with a few rickety looking metal tables and chairs that look like the absolute last thing I want to put my ass down on in 40-something degree weather. Off to the side of the cart, some fake wood lawn chairs are arranged in something like a circle around an unlit metal fireplace thing. The cart itself is painted in a generic preschool finger paint kind of blue, with a big menu off to the side of the ordering window. It's hard to tell from where I'm standing, but I guess the whole kitchen is contained in that one tiny area. Behind the register, I can see a young guy in a black fleece jacket handing change over to a hunched-over old lady. Faint sounds come from inside the cart: sizzling and clanging, and a few voices exchanging unintelligible words.

We get in line behind a tired looking family with a baby and two big-eyed toddlers who stare at us like we’ve just dropped down from a different planet. Suddenly I’m painfully aware of how dirty and gross we probably look, and the crowbar poking out of my backpack. Sasha once observed that out of the four of us, I’m the most likely to freak parents and their children out in public because I have a “naturally severe face” and I “look like the kind of person who plays with knives”. I try not to make eye contact with the kids in case they think I’m some kind of knife-wielding bad guy. The line moves slowly and thick clouds gather overhead, threatening rain, which would be really inconvenient. One of the kids is still staring at me periodically, looking away and pulling up the hood of is Iron Man sweatshirt every time I make any kind of movement, but I try my best to ignore him. I wonder about Mike and whether or not he and that employee ever got out of Starbucks. Hopefully he’s alive and has a phone that still works, because we really need to get serious about figuring out just what the hell is happening in this town. Sasha is apparently thinking about the same things because she reaches over and pulls my crowbar like a lever to get my attention.

“Hey,” she sort of whispers, trying to get Marco and Connie’s attention, “Don’t you think it’d be a better idea to do something productive?”

“But I’m hungry,” Connie groans dramatically, staggering around and clutching his stomach. Sasha looks amused but composes herself quickly.

“I’m serious, I think we should try to call Mike or something. At least figure out if we’re able to contact him first. And then food.” Connie looks satisfied with this answer, straightening himself back up while Sasha digs through her bag for her phone. Calling Mike is a more complicated process than you’d think, because he owns something like four different phones, all with different numbers. Why he has so many and how he manages to pay for all of that is a complete mystery to me, but then again Mike Zacharias as a whole is a mystery. The first three phones go to voicemail, which I kind of expected, and Sasha almost gives up after the last phone rings five times without any kind of answer, but then there’s noise and a voice on the other end, and I can’t hear what he’s saying but it’s definitely Mike.

“Mike,” Sasha lowers her voice in an attempt to seem inconspicuous, “Yeah it’s us,”

Mike says something back, but it’s impossible to make out actual words and speakerphone isn’t an option right now.

“Yeah, we’re fine. Had a little trouble on our way into town, but we got here okay,” Sasha says casually, making it sound like we had engine problems rather than an unexpected encounter with titans. “How are things with you, though?”

Mike says something else. His voice is even harder to understand this time, so I guess he’s trying not to be overheard.

"Yeah, Levi told us. Sounds like you had your hands pretty full,” Sasha keeps her voice conversational, but her eyebrows are slowly inching towards each other they way they do when she’s trying to piece together information or figure something out, “Any idea what was going on?”

“...........” By now I’ve figured out that they’re trying to make up a code as they go along, because Mike’s voice is a little clearer and I’m pretty sure he’s saying something about a dinner party.

“Wow. Must’ve been hell to, uh, clean up after all of them,”

“........”

“And they just... left without saying goodbye?”

“......”

“Oh. okay..” Sasha trails off. We’re almost to the front of the line now, and as much as I’m enjoying Sasha’s feeble attempts to sound nonchalant and play along with whatever kind of secret code they’re using, the butter smell coming from the cart is way stronger now and I’m remembering just how long it’s been since we ate breakfast.

“Listen, Mike,” Sasha sounds like she’s only half-paying attention to what she’s saying, “I’m gonna have to go now. Where is it you said you were?”

“...”

“Okay, yeah. We’ll meet you there later.” She hangs up and her eyebrows drift back into their usual spots as she reaches behind her and drops her phone back into her bag. “Okay. We’re here to eat but also ask people if they’ve seen anything,” She whispers, almost more to herself than to the rest of us, “Can’t let food distract us from the job.” The family in front of us moves away from the ordering window, the parents ushering their kids over to one of the tables to wait for their crepes. Now that I think about it, I’m not exactly sure what a crepe even is. I know it’s French and it’s like a pancake or something, but that’s about it. I didn’t realize crepes were a street food kind of deal, or that you could fill a whole menu with crepe-related items. How is crepe even pronounced?

“Jean. Jean, we’re ordering.” Connie elbows me in the shoulder and pushes me a little closer to the ordering window, and I realize that a) they’ve all already ordered, and b) that means they’re all expecting me to start asking the questions. The guy at behind the window looks at me weirdly, which is understandable. I’d be confused too if a bunch of kids with crowbars and metal pipes and a big dog with no leash came to eat at my crepe cart.

“I’ll uh-” I realize I never even looked at the menu, “I’ll just have what she got.” I say, pointing at Sasha. The guy’s face doesn’t change, but he nods and tells our orders to the people in the kitchen while Marco hands him a bunch of wadded-up ones. He gives us our change, and when we don’t leave he sighs heavily.

“Hang on,” I tell him, “We uh. Have to ask some stuff.” He rolls his eyes and puts out his hands like he’s telling us to start. I look around, hoping someone will tell me how to start but they all give me that “you do it” kind of look. I lean one arm on the counter and stare right into the guy’s face.

“Any idea why this town’s so deserted?” I ask, hoping I sound like I know what I’m doing. Crepe Guy takes a quick little glance around the area. A few pedestrians wander down the sidewalks and there’s movement in the window of the hat shop next door. There’s no cars in sight and it’s clear to me that even for June in a place that looks like it revolves around skiing, there should be a lot more activity going on.

“Not a clue. Usually by this time we’ve got a line twice this size. At first I thought business was just slow today but that doesn’t really make a lot of sense, does it?”

“No it doesn’t,” I mumble under my breath before asking the next question, “Has the town ever been this empty?”

“Not that I can remember. I mean in winter when it snows I guess, since the roads are basically useless. But around this time of year it’s pretty busy.” Crepe Guy sounds confused and kind of pissed that we’re holding up the line.

“Was it like this yesterday?”

“No, this just started happening today…” He screws up his face and looks over my head at the people behind us, “Listen, kid, there are people waiti-”

“Yeah, just gimme a minute or two. It’s kind of important.”

He rolls his eyes and sighs again, “I’m trying to work, and you’re holding up the line. You wanna tell me why this is such a pressing matter?”

Oh shit. Think, Jean. Think of a cover up. Cops? No, he’d never believe that. School project? That doesn’t even make sense. Scientists? Too close to our real job.

“We’re…” without thinking, I say the next thing that pops into my head, “paranormal investigators.” Fuck.

“Paranormal investigators.”

“Yes?”

“Okay, buddy. Are you taping this or something beca-”

“No no no, It’s true.” I look around at my team, hoping they’ll play along. Marco nods solemnly.

“Some freaky stuff out there,” Connie assures him stiffly, blinking rapidly. Sasha nods with her mouth hidden behind her hand. It’s not a good excuse but hopefully Crepe Guy will be fooled into thinking we’re a bunch of superstitious kids who spend too much time on the internet long enough to answer our questions. Besides, we’re not exactly lying to him.

“Yeah, see? It’s uh… it’s pretty spooky stuff and we think that uhhh….” I trail off. I’m running out of excuses here, but Marco picks up where I leave off.

“We’re investigating the area because we think ghosts might be behind the disappearances,” He explains. Sasha looks like she’s about to bust a lung, fake-coughing into her hands. Marco slaps her on the back a couple times without breaking eye contact with Crepe Guy.

“Sasha, why don’t you um, investigate that hat store. Maybe they know something,” He says, and I can see him trying not to crack a smile. Sasha coughs again and excuses herself to go next door so she doesn’t ruin our already bullshit cover up.

“So as we were saying-” Connie starts to say.

“Oh look. Your food’s ready.” Crepe Guy cuts him off, pointing to the window on the side of the cart where one of the chefs is holding four crepes folded up in cardboard cones.

“No please. We just need to know if anything weird happened last night,” Connie practically yells, talking about three times faster than normal.

“I know nothing. All I know is somehow the town got really empty overnight, and there’s no such thing as ghosts,” Crepe Guy swats at the air, “now get your food and go.”

“Can’t we just-” I don’t actually have a question to ask but I’m pissed at the guy for being such a dick to us.

“No.”

I glare in his general direction but he’s already apologizing to the person who was behind us and not paying attention to me. We get our crepes from the girl at the other window and Marco apologizes for making her hold them for so long. As it turns out we all ended up getting chocolate crepes except for Marco, who ordered ham and cheese, which he feeds bites of to Hamlet. It’s good food, and I’d eat there again except that I doubt we’ll be welcome back there anytime soon. When we find Sasha in the hat shop, she’s still giggling periodically to herself, and she’s now wearing a blue stocking cap on her head.

“What’s with the hat?” I ask, handing her one of the crepes.

“I found ten dollars on the ground as I was walking in here.” She explains between bites, “I asked a couple people if it was theirs but nobody claimed it so I bought a hat.” She grins at me.

“Fair enough. So what did Mike have to say?”

Before she can answer, one of the employees, a tall, thin middle-aged woman with red plastic glasses and a moss green sweater,  tells us there’s no food or dogs allowed in the store and that we have to leave. Thanking Sasha for her business and staring at me blankly, She puts a hand on Connie’s shoulder, gently directing him away from a display of ski helmet covers and towards the door. She all but shoves Marco away from a rack of knitted pom pom hats. Hamlet follows him out sheepishly. Once we’re all outside, I ask again about the conversation Sasha had with Mike. She looks around and then motions us all to follow her.

* * *

 

“He says he was at Starbucks because he was worried there might be some titan activity in the area and he wanted to be on his guard. Apparently Starbucks is the only thing open for 24 hours around here,” She explains as we make our way down the street. There are a few pedestrians out and about now, and despite what we thought when we first arrived the town is less deserted and more weirdly underpopulated. It’s alive, but just barely. The eerie silence is now punctuated with voices and footsteps every now and then, which puts me almost more on edge than the initial total blanket of nothingness. I feels like something’s about to happen. Every voice is talking about it and every sound behind me could be something that wants to kill us.

“So what happened with the titans?” I ask, trying to distract myself from the chills going down my back.

“Apparently after a while they just stopped passing by the window so Mike decided it was safe to go out again. He and the kid who was working there were both okay and I guess when they got out the titans were just... gone. We’re meeting him by some bakery and he says he’ll drive us up to his cabin from there and we'll try and figure stuff out.”

“Do we know where this bakery is exactly?”

Yeah it should be…” Sasha looks around, “Down this street here  and then to the… right… yeah.” As we walk along, the landscape doesn’t change much. The buildings get a little larger and some of them look like they were built more recently, but everything fits with the cookie village ski town look. Up ahead there’s a hotel and a big shop with a name I can’t pronounce that apparently sells “alpaca sweaters and unique gifts.” The clouds have dissipated slightly, and rain doesn’t look like it’ll be too much of a problem, but the sun is hidden and the sky is an endless, gloomy sheet of grey. It can’t be more than 50 degrees out here, and I’m starting to envy Sasha’s fortune because a hat would be nice right now. I put my hood up and shiver a little. Hamlet follows Marco without a leash, and a few dog-walkers look at Marco like he’s terribly irresponsible, but Hamlet would follow Marco anywhere so there’s no need to keep him tied up. It’s only an issue when deer are around.

“Here it is,” Sasha says, pointing to a generic green building and a sign printed with some French word above the word “bakery.” In front of the door, Mike is pacing around with a newspaper.

“Hey Mike!” Sasha shouts, waving to him. He lifts his head and waves back.

“Hey, it’s the kids!” As we get closer, I really get the full effect of Mike Zacharias in all his hairy glory.

Mike is 6’4 and built like someone who rips trees out of the ground professionally and wrestles bears in his free time. He’s got floppy blond hair that hangs in his face, a beaklike nose, and his facial hair is legendary among the road team kids. His beard isn’t much to talk about, scratchy and stubbly. As beards go it’s pretty decent, but his mustache is the real star of the show. It’s the most impressive mustache I’ve ever seen outside of history textbooks, and there’s a running joke that he’s always had it and he just popped out of the womb with a full mustache hanging out on his little baby face. He dresses exactly how you’d expect a guy who lives alone in the mountains and plays the guitar would dress: flannel shirts and hiking boots and a beat-up jacket that looks like it was fished out of a shark-infested sewer and put into the washing machine twenty times. Of course, when it’s too hot for that, he also has a pretty decent collection of band t-shirts. Mike’s cool because he makes a point of owning t-shirts from bands that Levi complains about just to piss him off. He also has a habit of smelling things all the time. Nobody’s really sure why he does it or what purpose it serves, but apparently he has a really good sense of smell. Apparently he and Erwin have been buddies for a long time, even before Erwin founded Scout, but even Erwin can’t figure him out half the time.

Mike is kind of the unofficial dad of all the road teams, even though we hardly ever see him in person. Sometimes he’ll call one of the teams if he hears they’re out on a job or he’ll send pictures of plants he sees in the woods or check up on the kids back in Kansas City via skype call. It’s not like a daily thing, because he’s got a job to do too, but it happens. He’s a weird dude but he makes a point to actually care about us, which is more than Levi or Erwin have ever done, and they’re the ones who are supposed to be in charge of the kids.

We all greet each other, exchanging “How’s it going”s and “wow you’ve gotten taller since i last saw you six months ago”s (or in Connie’s case, “you haven’t grown at all”). Mike even throws a piece of beef jerky that he apparently had in his pocket into the air for Hamlet to catch while we all pile into his old blue hippie van. I’ve either forgotten what a pile of shit his car is or it’s gotten worse in the past six months, but either way it’s even older and run down than Rose is if you can believe it. As we drive up to the house Connie and Marco tell Mike all about the crepe cart mishap and I worry that Sasha will literally bust one of her lungs laughing at me. Mike laughs too, a big booming dad laugh.

His cabin is a little less than ten minutes outside of town. It’s just on the edge of an area where a bunch of rich people own what look like luxury log cabins. Mike’s house is not one of these. It’s not a dump or anything, but looks like one in comparison to the things people build around it. It’s way older than any of the other houses in the area, and a lot smaller too. It’s basically your standard little cabin from the outside, but the inside is when things start to get weird.

When we first open the door, I’m expecting a contained sort of mess. I’ve seen a couple pictures of the inside of the house, but I’ve never been in it. We walk into what’s probably supposed to be a living room, judging from the leather armchair, old red couch, and television that looks like it hasn’t been turned on for five years. Mike must have pulled his kitchen table into the center of the room though, because the round wooden table and rickety-looking chair look out of place there. The really astonishing features of the room, though, are the office supplies scattered everywhere. Mike’s computer sits on the table, surrounded by paper, pens, highlighters, and spiral notebooks. Papers and writing supplies litter the floor, some of them covered in boot prints or crumpled up like they’ve been lying there for a while now.

“Mind the maps, Jean,” Mike warns me as I navigate through the mess. I look down and see that I’m about to step on a pile of printed-out road maps, all of them highlighted and marked with arrows and symbols that mean absolutely nothing to me. I step around them and into a small kitchen. The sink is full of unwashed dishes and coffee mugs, and the garbage can holds more Starbucks cups and takeout boxes than I can possibly count.

“How many all-nighters have you pulled?” I ask, snorting. Mike and the others follow me into the kitchen.

“It’s been a long two weeks, Kid,” Mike answers. Scout scientists all seem to have a common talent for two things: a) staying in a coffee-fueled state of awakeness for weeks at a time, and b) not answering questions directly. The main lab people sometimes don’t even answer you at all until you ask them a couple times. Ask someone anything and you’ll usually get some kind of abstract non-answer. My mom has won a lot of arguments this way.

“Titan sighting stuff?” Connie asks, sounding like he’s still taking in the sheer amount of crap lying around in the living room.

“Yep,” Mike says, putting a stray paper cup back into the garbage, “Trying to figure everything out. The whole ‘why here, why now?’ kinda deal.”

“Any ideas?”

“Kind of. From reading records of the few cases in this area in the last twenty years, it’s pretty obvious that this region’s particular breed of the virus is a fast acting little piece of work.” Mike is changing from flannel bear dad into scientist mode now. He goes to the living room and rifles through a stack of spiral notebooks until he finds the one he wants. It’s newer than the others, with a yellow plastic cover and a few pages marked with sticky notes. He opens it to a clean page and finds a pen to record anything important that we might say. It’s time to get to work. “You know how the final shift stage only lasts for a short time before the host eventually disintegrates?”

I nod. It’s one of the few things Scout knows for sure about titans. The average maximum time the host’s body can handle it’s damaged, mindless state is about three weeks, but since the virus is a little different depending on where you are, the final stage can last anywhere from three days to six weeks. After that the host body breaks down and basically dissolves.

“This area’s right around the four-day time estimate. But what if there’s a new mutation forming that only lasts overnight?”

“I guess that’d explain why half the town is gone,” Marco says slowly, still processing the information, “They all shifted overnight and were gone by morning. But I thought the town was overrun last night. But that wouldn’t explain why there were so many of them, would it?”

“Bingo,” Mike says, pointing at Marco, “There’s our problem. Plus, there are no records of anyone even having the virus anywhere near here within the last few years. But two weeks ago I could have sworn I saw something walking around out there in the woods, and that’s when I started doing some digging.”

“Well that explains why this place is such a m-OW!” I start to say before Sasha elbows me hard in the ribs.

“So why didn’t we get sent out here until a few days ago?” She asks, ignoring me.

“I wasn’t sure I really did see something until it happened again. But a couple days ago, I saw another one and called Erwin about it.” Mike explains. He scribbles down a few notes in the spiral and yawns loudly.

“You know,” Marco speaks up. He’s sitting on the kitchen counter next to Sasha, staring at the ceiling and idly petting Hamlet with his foot, “This is sounding more and more like what happened to Jean this morning.” Mike turns to Marco.

“What happened to Jean this morning?”

I try my best to tell him all the details of the encounter. We’ve had a long day and even though it’s not even dark out yet, morning feels like ages ago.

“So they’ve got Annie and those guys checking out the area now?” Mike asks when we finish a barely coherent, disjointed version of the story  because everyone kept cutting in and trying to tell parts of it.

“Yeah,” I say, “But we haven’t actually talked to them at all.”

“It definitely sounds like this should fit into the big picture somewhere.” Mike sighs, and it’s something I can only describe as a dad sigh. The kind of sigh dads in movies and tv do after a long day at the office. Or in Mike’s case, a long two weeks at the office. “Looks like I won’t be sleeping tonight. Again. Give this to Hanji,” He closes the spiral and hands it to Connie.

“Anything else or have we covered everything?” Sasha yawns, nearly hitting Marco in the face. It’s practically dark now, and the world outside the cabin is in that greyish-blue state between sunset and full darkness. I’m tired, I realize. I wonder if we’ll have to drive home tonight or if we’ll just park in some lot on our way out of town for the night and drive back in the morning.

“I think that’s it,” Mike says with a sense of finality, “I’ll drive you kids back into town. I assume you can find your way back to your car?” We assure him that we can. As we leave I take one last look at the mess in the living room. There’s something threatening about the whole thing, but I can’t figure out what it is.

We chatter idly on our way back into the town, but everyone is tired and nobody pays much attention to what’s being said. Breckenridge after dark is a bit more busy than it was in the daytime, but with half the town missing I still wouldn’t call it lively. It’s like the life was sucked out of it overnight. Mike drops us off at the bakery.

“See you later, paranormal investigators.” He says as he waves goodbye. Sasha grins and Marco and Connie both snort. I crack a smile even though I wish they’d all let that go. We walk back to Rose in silence, close together and shivering against the cold. Hamlet barks at pedestrians and prances alongside us. It could be winter, I think. In Missouri, at least. Winter here is probably nothing but snow.

Sasha drives this time, but only for a little while. At around 9 we decide that if we drive for much longer we’ll hit the mountain roads and have nowhere to park the car, so she pulls over into the parking lot of some tiny strip mall for the night. We steal blankets from Hamlet’s pile, not caring that they’re covered in dog hair. It’s totally dark and the clouds have rolled back in I guess, because it’s finally starting to rain a little bit. We talk for a little while, all in a pile under the blankets in the back of the van. For a few seconds, Hamlet’s a little pissed that we’ve hijacked his bed, but he gets over it pretty quickly. Rose’s heating system is pretty much dead and has been for over a year, but between the blankets, whatever body heat we have between us, and the dog laying on top of us giving off heat like an electric blanket, the cold isn’t really a problem. Everyone falls asleep at their own pace. Connie nods off first despite Sasha poking his face, but she drifts off pretty soon after. Marco falls asleep with his head on Sasha’s chest and one arm around me. Pretty soon I’m the only one awake, but even that doesn’t last long.

My last thought before I finally close my eyes is of Mike’s trashed living room and the yellow spiral now sitting on the van’s dashboard. I think I finally figured out what was so threatening about them. It feels like a warning, like something’s about to happen and when it does, we’ll be right in the middle of it.

I shut my eyes and feel myself drifting into unconsciousness.

 ****  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this chapter! It's the longest one yet and I'm pretty proud of it. Sorry about the lack of action, but it's coming up soon
> 
> My main tumblr is rairatrio, but i now have a writing blog where i'll be posting most of my fic stuff. The url for that is beanvolio, so be sure to check that out. If you have questions, ask me! Be sure to tag anything about this fic that you post on tumblr as "#wmtc fic" because i'd love to see it!


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